Today
I received an e-mail from the Natural Products Association (NPA) asking
me to support the Dietary Supplement and Non-Prescription Drug Consumer
Protection Act (the �AER bill�). Apparently they do not know I am one
of the most outspoken critics of this legislation. I have already posted
two articles on this topic for NWV, one in July
and one in November.
The NPA, formerly the NNFA (National Nutritional Foods Association), is
the largest trade association for ingredient suppliers and health food
stores. This group, along with CRN (the Council for Responsible Nutrition)
has been taken over by Big Pharma and is selling out the supplement industry.

You
as a consumer must weigh in on this subject before it is too late. Your
options for effective natural solutions are in serious jeopardy. Immediate
action is required to defend health freedom and your right to have therapeutic
choices in natural health options.

Unfortunately,
it is up to �we the American people� to save the supplement industry from
traitorous groups pretending to be on your side. There is a serious attempt
underway to push this bill through prior to the close of the lame duck
session (apparently to end on December 8). Click
here to take action now, tell your congressional leaders to vote no
on S. 3546/H.R. 6168.

This
is what the December 4, 2006, NPA e-mail stated:

We�re contacting
you because an important bill may soon be voted on in Congress. This
legislation, which the Natural Products Association � along with the
other leading dietary supplement trade groups � supports, is, S. 3546
in the Senate and H.R. 6168 in the House of Representatives.

Yes,
these are the names of the bills and they are rotten to the core for consumers
and the supplement industry.

Contrary to what
you may have heard, this legislation will not affect the availability
of dietary supplements or lead to closures of health food stores.

Wrong,
an outright lie! This legislation may drastically reduce the availability
of therapeutic supplements by linking them with adverse effects actually
caused by drugs. True, health food stores are not likely to close. They
will keep selling the lower quality Big Pharma brands, like One-A-Day
(Bayer) and Centrum (Wyeth). About
80% of the supplement market is not really concerned about your health;
this includes big box stores, most network marketing companies, drug stores,
super markets, and internet fly-by-night operations. Big Pharma knows
these brands pose no competition to their monopolistic drug cartel. Rather,
Big Pharma wants all effective nutrition off the market � the really great
products that fix diabetes, resolve depression, prevent heart disease,
enable weight loss, fix fibromyalgia, and help a person survive cancer
treatment. Big Pharma wants a sick America and will do anything to keep
people in poor health and on multiple toxic drugs.

It�s also important
to remember that the legislation would require only serious � such as
life threatening� experiences, not just any complaint, to be reported.
And keep in mind that the government already tracks adverse experiences
that could be related to dietary supplements.

The
FDA is currently unable to properly track adverse events caused by drugs
and does not even know which drugs are safe. Over 100,000 Americans are
killed each year by drugs, and at least 3 million are injured so severely
it requires hospitalization. The FDA already has an adequate MedWatch
reporting system for serious adverse events for dietary supplements. The
proposed bill calls for supplement manufacturers to keep track of all
complaints any person reports, serious or not, a standard far stricter
than truly dangerous drugs! This is absolutely absurd.

If such
legislation becomes law it will be used as a vehicle for the FDA to remove
supplements from the market based on hearsay data. There is no mechanism
in place for any supplement company to collect health information on the
person reporting, including existing medications or health history. This
means the legislation can and will be used as a witch hunt against effective
natural options for health. Certainly, the lawyers at NPA and those supporting
this bill are licking their chops at all the business this legislation
will generate for them.

What�s new is that
manufacturers who get reports of consumers being seriously harmed by
their products can�t keep them secret. While we believe such occurrences
are extremely rare, if they do happen, reporting is the right thing
to do.

True
serious adverse events from dietary supplements are extremely rare and
already covered by MedWatch. Any medical doctor or patient believing a
supplement has injured them can easily fill out a MedWatch form. No one
has any objection to serious AER reporting. That is not what this bill
is really all about. It is about gutting DSHEA (Dietary Supplement Health
and Education Act of 1994), the legislation that enables American consumers
to have more options for health than in any other country in the world.
By implying there is a safety problem (which there isn�t) and making supplement
companies defend themselves, the burden of proof is shifted from the FDA
to supplement companies, thereby drastically changing existing law in
favor of Big Pharma and away from access to natural health options granted
by DSHEA. The FDA already does what it can to discriminate against small
and innovative companies.

If H.R. 6168 and
S. 3546 are passed and become law, they will amend the federal Food,
Drug and Cosmetic Act to require the reporting of �serious� adverse
events for both over the counter (OTC) drugs and dietary supplements
to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

That
is true. However, there is no way to differentiate between drug-drug interactions,
drug-nutrient interactions, or food poisoning, meaning there is no way
to accurately judge what is causing a problem. Furthermore, the real issue
is the safety of drugs, not supplements. Until the FDA has a working system
for drug safety, there is no way for the FDA to judge supplement safety.
There is a reason the Institute of Medicine reported that the FDA is dysfunctional
and not able to protect Americans from harm. Its drugs!!!! � not vitamins.

While the Natural
Products Association understands that the mandatory reporting requirements
of the AER bill will add to manufacturers� record keeping responsibilities,
we believe the bill will benefit the industry in the long run.

This
opinion must be coming from the lawyers that stand to make a fortune defending
supplement companies from frivolous attacks relating to non-serious adverse
events. Also, doctors will attempt to blame vitamins for the devastating
side effects of their commonly prescribed medications. Dangerous drugs,
like statins,
are in widespread use and making many Americans very ill and even causing
premature death. When someone has heart failure from taking statins, doctors
will try to blame it on vitamin E. It would be a major travesty to pass
legislation that allows the side effects of dangerous drugs to be reported
in such as way as to remove safe and effective supplements from the market.
The Big Pharma goal is to maintain its monopoly at any cost. It is an
agenda based on drug sales and a callous disregard for human life.

First, by helping
to change the perception by critics of the dietary supplement industry
that it is not well regulated.

This
is the Big Lie. The
truth is that supplements are safer than food. Supplements are not drugs.
Critics of the dietary supplement industry are all getting a pile of money
from Big Pharma and they pretend to be upset about network marketing companies
making bogus health claims, companies with a history of paying off Senators
Hatch and Harkin for protection. Since most of these companies that seemingly
cause problems are members of CRN and NNFA, why don�t these junk trade
organizations clean up their own members? There is no need to put out
of business the many nutritional companies providing a true quality service
to millions of Americans in true need of real help, unless of course you
are simply trying to put your own competition out of business.

Second, over time,
the recordkeeping and reporting requirements will substantiate what
many in the industry have been saying all along � that the safety record
of dietary supplements is exemplary, especially when compared to other
health-related products.

Obviously,
true serious AERs will be very infrequent, unlike the several thousand
people dying each week at the hands of Big Pharma. However, the recordkeeping
requirement for non-serious adverse events opens the door for unlimited
FDA harassment of any company. Since the FDA is currently bought and paid
for by Big Pharma, that is a huge problem.

Ultimately, safety
reporting is the right thing to do for a responsible industry that puts
consumers first.

In a
world where Big Pharma and the FDA have spent decades trying to obliterate
competition, such a na�ve statement is designed to appeal to �reasonableness�
and �political correctness.� NPA has no concept of integrity to the US
Constitution or what makes America great. If anyone wants to believe the
utopian garbage put forth by NPA, try to get the statement to apply to
Big Pharma.

The
e-mail is then signed by the Natural Products Association. Yes, not one
person in this pathetic group had the nerve to put their name on this
embarrassing e-mail. I wonder who wrote it. Was it Senator Hatch�s younger
son who works at NPA? Was it Senator Hatch�s older son who lobbies for
NPA? Or was it one of the Big Pharma members sitting on the NPA board?
Companies supporting this horrid legislation and the related anti-American
globalization agenda of Codex Alimentarius include Mannatech, Herbalife,
Shacklee, Now Foods, Dr. Weil Vitamins, Jarrow, and many more.

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Besides
faxing, phoning, and e-mailing Congress to vote no on S.3546, any person
purchasing supplements should demand that whomever they buy supplements
from is not a member of CRN or NPA. Health food stores and ingredient
suppliers should withdraw from these bogus Big Pharma pro-globalization
organizations. If you need more facts to convince you of the magnitude
of this problem, read my book Fight
for Your Health: Exposing the FDA�s Betrayal of America. If you
buy supplements from such companies or stores then answer this simple
question: why are you paying money to be shot in the back?

You
as a consumer must weigh in on this subject before it is too late. Your
options for effective natural solutions are in serious jeopardy. Immediate
action is required to defend health freedom and your right to have therapeutic
choices in natural health options.